New Magic Item – Yoke of Servitude (A to Z Challenge Y)

29 April, 2013

The Chainer Factory in the Dark Star Dominion produces magical tools for the Dominion and for the slavers that provide raw material for the Dominion’s mines and fields. Their most produced item is a simple slave collar known as the Yoke of Servitude, or simply the Yoke, which is used on the most valuable of slaves. It may reduce their initiative but the increase in docility makes it a widely used tool.

Those opposed to slavery will usually take any opportunity to destroy these items of oppression.

Yoke of Servitude

These metal collars range from lace-like works of precious metals to harsh and brutal ones made of iron, but all are exceptionally strong and difficult to damage or open. Once placed around a person’s neck, they can only be removed by magic or by destroying the yoke.

They have different effects, depending on if the collar is accepted willingly or is forced upon the wearer, in either case properly placing the Yoke and activating its magic can take as long as a minute.

The effects of the Yoke are:

Forced, the wearer suffers a -4 penalty to Wisdom and -2 penalty to Intelligence and Charisma and must make a Will save (DC 16) to actively oppose their master or designated superior or disobey their orders or to make any attempt to escape servitude.

Willing, the wearer suffers a -2 penalty to Wisdom and Charisma and must make a Will save (DC 20) to actively oppose their master or designated superior or disobey their orders or to make any attempt to escape servitude.

To use the knock spell to open a yoke requires a caster level check against a DC of 30. Decorative yokes have a hardness of 8,15 hit points and a break DC of 27, while the heavy duty ones have a hardness of 12, 20 hit points and a break DC of 30.

Notes: Not a nice item. Nor one inexpensive enough to be widely used, excepted by the wealthiest, but it seems like the sort of magic item that would be created if magic and slavery coexists. Slavery is not a pleasant subject and I have talked about its role in gaming before.